Chronicles of a 2007/09 Season Ticket Holder

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Other miscellaneous notes that didn't make their way into the main body of my report:

• Even after Domizzi's first penalty, with Napoli up 2-1, the outspoken guy next to me still blurted out "no, I still don't get that goal" - referring to Del Piero's strike.
  
• A guy sitting behind us kept questioning the masculinity of several Juve players: "don't worry about him, he's gay!!" he would encourage whichever Napoli player to challenge whichever Juve player for the ball. "He's gay! The kid is Buffon's!!!" a comment that got a good laugh out of all of us, as now he was even commenting on whether or not the Juve player's kid was even his...

Some banners erected by the Curva A:

"Auguri papa' Del Piero, e' nato un altro bastardo bianconero!!"
("Congrats daddy Del Piero, another black and white bastard is born!!", a reference to Del Piero's newborn...)

"La chiusura delle curve simbolo di debolezza (or something along those lines)"
("The closure of the curves (and banning of away fans) is a sign of weakness"

"Ebbe ragione Blatter, l'Italia non e' all'altezza"
("Blatter was right, Italy isn't up to par," another sign critical of how Italian authorities have chosen to combat hooliganism with away fan bans and curve closures.)

Of note, an ambulance was on the athletic track after the game as it appeared someone had been hurt. As it would turn out, an object was apparently thrown from the audience and struck a member of the Sky crew. Plus ça change...

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Another anecdote I forgot to share with you guys. After Domizzi's second penalty, I blurted out "I'm gonna have Caffe' Borghetti every game!"

A book, huh? Hmmm...not sure if I could stretch it out quite that much...

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

...apparently you can also kick it multiple times. I just kicked it 5 times myself.

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

I just raised it to 60 but....it still doesn't show up on the front page?

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

OK, the superstitious bit is getting to be ridiculous now.

What do I eat before the game? And more importantly, what do I wear? I got my lucky jeans and lucky indoor soccer shoes, which have been staples of my stadium attire since the second home game (the disasterous first game saw me wear a pair of shoes that have since been stripped from my wardrobe, and a pair of shorts that shall never again be worn at the stadium). Since the Slovakia flag hasn't come in yet, I'm thinking about wearing the Hard Rock Cafe' Budapest polo shirt I bought in...Budapest, as a show of support for Garics, who was at least born in Hungary. Problem is, on day one, a guy was at the stadium wearing a Budapest t-shirt and well, we lost...and were it to happen today, I would never forgive myself. Plus, Garics might not even play.

Don't have anything Argentine...or Uruguayan...

Could wear the Samoa Rugby Union shirt that brought a lot of luck vs. Juve, but it's long sleeved and it's kinda nice out.

Man, this is hard.

So this is it. Today I need to christen a new shirt that will bring luck. Gotta feel the vibe, though. Had mixed fortunes with Italy/World Cup related items, so those are always a gamble. Don't want to break out any Napoli jerseys, as they have all had their times over the years (good and bad) and have nothing to add to this campaign.

...

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Too nervous. My stomach is a wreck. Can't sit still. Can't concentrate enough to get ready.

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Napoli-Reggina is the type of bread-and-butter game that builds you as an experienced fan. It's easy to talk about the glamour of a Napoli-Juventus and say "I was there," but it's being at games like these that really flesh out your experiences as a season ticket holder. Because these types of obscure, suffered games are the ones that you will reference one day in a conversation in order to really throw out a subliminal "I was there, I know what I'm talking about - where were you?" Because after all, this is Napoli we are talking about, not Milan. Whether or not you really learn anything from these games - or especially if anyone who intends to throw out that subliminal message has any idea what they are talking about when it comes to Napoli or soccer - remains to be seen, but this type of experience is going to be far more common over the long haul than a 3-1 win over Juve. 10 games like this are just as fundamental to your development as a fan than any single "big" win. Perhaps more so.

Having resolved the crisis of what to wear, I finally managed to leave my house in a timely fashion to head over to Armando's. One thing immediately struck me about the trip over: the ease with which I was able to cross over at the Fuorigrotta exit of the Tangenziale to get over to the proper lane to head northbound. Usually, by shortly after 1pm there is a huge traffic jam of cars coming from other directions, full of cars who are all trying to get through the toll lanes that are closest to me. It just so happens that I need to go through one of the lanes on the opposite side of the habitual traffic jam, which means skillfully and forcefully cutting your way across the jam of cars trying to intercept your path but today, the mass of cars was nowhere to be seen. Very odd.

I get to Armando's and manage to park right in front of his house - also very odd. Armando wasn't actually there yet - he was off picking up Anna (not to be confused with Annalisa) - so in the meantime I make small talk with his wife Mena and take a leak in his bathroom (actually two leaks), partially in order to avoid having to go at the stadium, but mostly as something that has become yet another superstitious pre-game ritual.

Armando finally shows up at almost 2pm, entering the door with a "where is Randy, who has brought us so much luck?!!!" Not 5 minutes and we are out the door on our way. We park in the usual area just above the San Paolo and something else that is very odd, there are no "parking guys" who would typically claim a Euro or two for...well, just for being there and being the token "parking guy" for that area.

(For the uninitiated, the "parking guys" are prevalent throughout Italy, particularly so in Naples. It's too complicated to explain and not worth getting into here, but it's one of those things where you give the dude some change even though he isn't any official parking guy at all, but you don't want him messing with your car either so there you go. And so the story goes.)

Even the entrance to the stadium was far too easy. We entered after 2pm, i.e. less than an hour before kickoff. A first. As it turns out, since Thursday was All Saints Day, a big Catholic holiday, many people took Friday off work and went out for the weekend. There goes the explanation for why the Fuorigrotta exit was so deserted...

We enter, hang around in the group's area for a while, before Annalisa and i head up to take our spots shortly after 2:30pm.

My entrance, with Armando and Anna in the foreground.
[youtube]gG0MenurQrE[/youtube]

A couple of great banners erected before the game. The Curva A:
"Sconfitta ma non vinta,
Squadra di cuore, carattere, e grinta,
Avanti Napoli"

("Beaten but not defeated,
A team of heart, character, and determination,
Onward Napoli")



(Really wish I could find a way to post the pics in actual size so you guys could actually read the banners...)

A rare banner erected in the distinti:
"Zalayeta absolved, Napoli-Juve 4-1"

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Right before Annalisa and I made our way up to row 24 of the Tribuna Nisida, Armando said to me "you guys should come down at halftime and get some Caffe' Borghetti!"

"Sure!" I respond with little enthusiasm. Attilio brought it up to us against Juve and it went well. Coming down ourselves would represent a break with the newly-established tradition (read: a horrendous way to bring terrible luck upon us). We'll see.

Staying on the topic of Caffe' Borghetti for a moment, at halftime I asked Annalisa about it.

"OK, so do we want the Borghetti or not?"

Annalisa wasn't too interested.

"Well, it brought us luck last time..."

"Fine, let's have it."

"OK!" I'm thinking we are making progress here. "2nd question, do we go down and get it, or wait for Attilio to bring it up?"

"No, we have to wait for Attilio! That's part of the ritual."

"Yes!" Now let's see if he comes up...

...and he did! With a single shot, except this time he didn't come up for a second. I wonder how that will affect the good luck we are supposedly getting from the substance?

As for the game itself, the experience of those of us who were there wasn't all that different than that of those of you who followed it by miscellaneous other means. If anything, being there in person was even more frustrating as we were witness to the "spectacle" (read: crapfest) that was Napoli's performance. This week's Quote of the Week is a Gazzetta dello Sport headline referencing Napoli I read over Annalisa's shoulder: "grandi contro le grandi, piccoli contro le piccole." "Great against the greats, small against the smalls." My fear exactly, and an earily prophetic headline...

Right as the game kicked off, this guy behind us yells out "guagliu', I had a dream last night that Napoli won 1-0 with a goal from Hamsik under the Curva A!" I'll take it! On that note, Napoli started off attacking towards the Curva B, very unusual and with only one precedent this season: Napoli-Genoa...

We kick off, and as we slowly build up our first scoring play, not more than a few seconds after the guy revealed his (prophetic?) dream to us, the same guy yells out "watch! This is gonna be a goal right here!" Didn't he just say our goal would be while attacking against the Curva A?

We started off our usual, lucid selves. But very quickly, after a couple of attacks that would prove futile, the team started falling asleep. "Small against the smalls." Somehow I just knew that line was going to describe our day.

And something else I just knew was that the #7 guy for Reggina (too lazy to look up who it was and don't really care) would end up scoring. He simply made too many mistakes in the first half which resulted in turnovers in our favor. The way the day was going, with nothing going our way, it was only all too obvious the same guy would turn around and score...

And score he would early in the second half. A header off a corner kick. After our numerous corner kicks came up empty, as all our attacks to that point, Reggina puts it away in their first real chance. Suddenly, the ghosts of Napoli-Cagliari rose out of their graves and contemplated sweeping over the San Paolo.

A silence. But unlike the silence which followed Del Piero's goal, which was the silence of 60,000 people failing to understand what just happened and just how the other team decided they would start celebrating as if they had just scored a goal or something, this silence was the silence of 50,000 (?) thinking to themselves "I ********ing knew these other guys would score, after all the chances we had and proceeded to ******** up." And seeing the #7 guy celebrate made me curse the sixth sense which makes me predict these things before they actually happen (just as I had suddenly predicted that Juve would score off the 2nd half kickoff without Napoli even touching the ball last week...).

After running our hands through our hair, using our hands to cover our faces, cursing, and doing whatever else every individual fan likes to do when confronted with a disappointing outcome to a given play, we had all run out of ways to show our frustration and simply sat there staring. Actually, the cursing part never went away. Neither did any of the other things, except now we just felt that much dumber for doing them - over, and over, and over.

Reja can't get a substitution right. Calaio' needs to come on. Sosa sucks. Lavezzi is asleep. Hamsik is ********ing everything up. Grava needs to die. Rullo too.

Calaio' finally comes on. We get a penalty. Calaio' goes to take it. "No, Reja, you piece of shit! What the ******** are you doing?! Let Domizzi take it! Let Domizzi take it! ********!"

These are the moments that you sometimes have the luxury of pondering as they are happening. Here is Calaio' who has barely been given a chance to play this year after being a big part of our promotion to Serie A last year, a player the San Paolo faithful scream for week after week, only to be disappointed by Reja who insists on Sosa and putting Calaio' on with no more than 10-15 minutes left. It isn't clear why he is suddenly the one to take the penalty, but the reasoning is at least clear. If he scores, it's his first career Serie A goal. If he scores, he would presumibly be psychologically recovered and could well go on to play - and score? - on a regular basis. These are the moments that could change the course of an entire season, in their small, humble way.

"Let Domizzi take it!"

Well, whether or not the course of the season was altered by this incident can only be determined at a later time. Calaio', as could have been easily predicted by the too-good-to-be-true circumstances of the incident, didn't score. Did I already mention this is Napoli, not Milan?

"Calaio' is a former player. I respect him, but he is burned. And it's all his fault!!" Annalisa spit out in anger, while cutting a hole in the back of Reja's head with the laser beams that were shooting out of her eyes if this were a Stephen King novel.

"Bring Calaio' on!"

"Let Domizzi take it!"

"This guy sucks!"

Only in Naples do you see such a quick turnaround in a collective whole's assessment of a given player's merit.

Time goes on, but rather than serve as an opportunity to allow us to get even, it only serves to embarress us more. Nobody wants to shoot the damn ball. Seriously. It's a ball. It's made to be kicked. Shoot the ********ing ball. It ain't gonna hurt. But no, everyone has to look for the fancy pass or beat that third defender on the way to getting a clear shot at goal, which of course never comes because when Bogliacino is out there trying to beat three guys, the second one is gonna take the ball.

"What pisses me off the most is thinking about how Ulivieri must be rejoicing!" Annalisa's thoughts on the former Napoli coach and newly-appointed Reggina coach and his thoughts on the game to that point.

Another home defeat. Our third. Against very modest opposition.

I had elected to keep my cell phone in my pocket vice holding it in my hand before the game started, yet another superstitious thing. Against Juve, I had held the phone in my hand throughout the first half and placed it in my pocket the second half. As things weren't going so well, I took it out. There was a new text message.

"Hey! I didn't hear from you today! FORZA NAPOLI!"

Oh my God! Ester!

Did I mention previously about how Ester brings us good luck (according to me) and I promised her we would talk before every Napoli game? Well, I neglected to contact her today...but started texting her from that point on. Never mind that the ritual didn't seem to work during the Fiorentina game...

I should mention Fabio at this point. Fabio is a peculiar fan. He has been a season ticket holder since the days when his namesake with the last name of Cannavaro was a ballboy. Maybe even before then. Fabio routinely irritates many around him with his obsession with his little radio. It isn't enough to follow the Napoli game. An avid better, Fabio has to follow every other game physically being played in Italy at the same time through his headphones, blurting out events from other fields as if they were even more important than what is currently happening in the San Paolo.

"Langella just scored! Atalanta is up in Catania!" with an implied "we're ********ed!" in there is something he will blurt out - as Napoli is attacking. How we're ********ed by Atalanta scoring in Catania is something only he will understand, but if you ask him, he will be more than happy to explain it to you. "If Fabio didn't exist, he would need to be invented" Sasa' once stated to describe him. And it's true. Fabio is a monumental fan. Without him, the San Paolo and the community of Napoli fans worldwide would be left with an enormous void, though I didn't do a decent job of explaining why here. Maybe some other time.

The reason why I mention Fabio is that Napoli hasn't lost at home with him present in years. No one can remember when Napoli's last home defeat with Fabio present actually took place.

Napoli-Cagliari, Fabio was out of town. We lost.

"That's right, Napoli still hasn't lost at home with me present! Napoli-Genoa, and I wasn't there (nor was anyone else, of course)..." Fabio blurted out after Napoli-Juve, the sudden revelation coming to him with as the metaphoric light bulb came on over his head.

Lavezzi scored a historic goal. Not because it was his first league goal at the San Paolo, but because it allowed Fabio's distinct record to live another day. Where would we all be without Fabio and his record?

In really bad shape, that's where.

Lavezzi's strike brought some energy back to the 50,000 (?) present, but push as we may have for the winner, it was not to come. I couldn't even really celebrate. Kinda like Sosa's goal against Livorno, Lavezzi's goal against Reggina served more to provide relief than anything else.

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

This time, it was Armando who was in a hurry to head back (why is it that whoever is giving me a ride is always the one in a hurry?) so no time to chat with Annalisa, Dona, or anyone else after the game.

"Tell Peppe I said hi!"

"Of course!" Annalisa responded.

"We'll talk about meeting the team outside the stadium at the next game..."

Two items of interest of particular note brought up by Annalisa over the course of the afternoon.

The first is that one of these days she wants to wait outside the stadium where the team bus arrives.

"What a great opportunity to debut the Slovak flag, so Hamsik can actually see it!" I respond.

"Yes, so he will get a nationalistic moment of pride and kick some ass!"

Annalisa and I are thinking as one more and more as the season goes on.

The other item is that she expressed some interest in going to San Siro in January to see Milan-Napoli. An away game! Brilliant! Not sure how much she - or I, for that matter - would be able and interested in following through, but it's definitely something to ponder. What an experience that would be...

Surprisingly, the mood wasn't quite as negative after the game as you might expect. "You're really disappointed, aren't you Randy?" Attilio would ask me in the car on our way home. Maybe. Though I feared that we would come up "small" against Reggina. It was to be expected after such an intense October.

"These guys play game after game, so understandibly they aren't going to have the energy to do anything at one point," yet another noteworth statement from Annalisa towards the end of the game. Not to monopolize the thread with her comments, but she is the one person I know that I talk to over the course of the game, as everyone else sits six rows below us...

A blurry shot from outside the Curva B, as we walk back to Armando's car.


"We talked, and saved Napoli's game!" My text message to Ester immediately after this pic was taken. Thus endures another superstitious ritual...

A coffee at Armando's house after the game, a rare treat, and I'm off into the evening to make my way home. Disappointed, but not really. After all, I feel that much more fleshed out and complete as a fan for having been "there." An otherwise meaningless, forgettable game, but everyone likes to have their "disappointing" game from the past ready to break out in times of need for whatever reason. This one is gonna be mine.

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

Next home game I'm gonna ask Annalisa if she is still contemplating the Milan option. If so and she is cool with me tagging along, that planning may take place. Otherwise, there isn't any particular trasferta I wanna do. Either you travel with the mass of traveling ultras and expose yourself to potential police brutality/mistreatment, not to mention the more common incidents vs. other ultras, or you discretely sit with the home fans and make every effort not to reveal yourself as the traveling Napoli fan and potentially expose yourself to whatever the home fans wanna throw your way, perhaps even literally.

All in all, trasferte are not worth the countless problems that plague them so they are only something I would be willing to do if several things fell into place in just the right way. If we can get tickets in Milan in a "safe" sector of San Siro, away from both sets of ultras, then maybe. Otherwise, nope.

Genoa-Napoli would be worth doing, but getting tickets would be really hard as it is a very popular trasferta. I would definitely enjoy doing that one, but only if I could go with at least one other person I know.

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

All this talk about trasferte reminds me of the stadium song that is currently stuck in my head.

Last week it was the "cumm' e' bell' 'a citta' e Pulecenella" song that you can hear in the first video from the Juve game. Today it's the chant often heard out of the Curva A:

Ovunque tu vada,
(Where you may go,)

(Long pause, with the entire curva in silence)

...

Noi ti seguiremo!
(We will follow you!)

 

Re: Chronicles of a 2007/08 Season Ticket Holder

"Oppressalo!"

What?

"Oppressalo! Oppressalo!"

I can't even translate that.

Oppress him! No, that would be opprimilo!

Press him! No, that would be pressalo!

Well, I'm not really sure what the guy - who was very serious - was trying to say, but either way it didn't make any difference as we came out with the 3 points anyway, even without the team following the instructions (?) of some guy a few rows behind us.

But regardless, apathy. Apathy is the single word that stands out the most when thinking about yesterday.

Apathy in the ease with which I reached Armando's house, with virtually no one on the road. I had called Annalisa before leaving the house:

"Hey that Slovak flag hasn't come in yet...do you still want to try and meet the team bus outside the stadium?"

"Well, I'm actually already on the bus and don't think I will make it there in time."

"No worries, we'll just do it next time when the flag comes in."

Apathy in following pre-game rituals. Little time to eat lunch and not much in my house. The only thing fast was a bag of frozen pappardelle with boar sauce. Hmmm. Usually something I have with a little vino. Don't wanna eat anything fancy before the game, much less drink any alcohol. Ordered a beer when Napoli was up in Palermo. We lost. Booze. Can't have it with Napoli.

Fired up the pappardelle anyway and cracked open a bottle of vino.

Apathy in the lack of tension and nervousness that preceded the game. I couldn't sit besides myself before the Reggina game. Somehow yesterday it almost felt like there was no game.

"Don't worry Randy, we'll leave soon enough. No use getting there too early. Then we just end up sitting there waiting." You thought it was just me? That was Armando, once I got to his house.

Apathy.

An apathy that only grew stronger as we got closer to the stadium and game time. For the first time, I actually understood the visiting side's starting lineup very clearly as it was announced over the PA. The fans couldn't even be bothered to jeer the visitors.

As Calaio' walked by our section of the stands on his way to the bench, he got a solid wave of support from the crowd. Very few people here have lost faith in him...

"Welcome back to planet Earth" read the headline of one of the several free papers they hand out outside the stadium. Couldn't be bothered to actually read more than the first 2-3 sentences of the article. As the headline would have suggested, it was the all too predictable commentary by someone criticizing how we had spent too much time building up our egos during the Month of Death and came out of the Fiorentina-Reggina-Palermo tour de force with a pathetic point. A wake-up call. Got it. We suck. We need to wake up and work. Right. Too apathetic to read it.

"As it turns out, no one was on the road. I got here with the bus way earlier than expected at 1 and saw the team bus arrive around 1:20..." A lot of apathy going around the whole city. Not only that, but some other pre-game superstitious rituals were exhorcised.

"Time to watch the Maradona video..."

"Naw. We tied last time. We gotta change things around." Annalisa keepin' it real. She even had a new scarf with her. "1926 Partenopei." And to think that I have yet to buy one this year for superstitious reasons...

Apathy.

And as the game began, the sense of apathy continued to grow and now seemed to have infected both teams on the field.

Actually, before I even get to the game, let me address the issue of how freakin' ugly Catania's away kit is. Horrendous.

"My God, that is nasty!" I raise my head to see what the fuss is about...still don't see it...what? OH!! That?!! Holy crap!

"I didn't even see it right away cos I thought they were the photographers." Even Annalisa was confused. And it's true. With that blue and especially orange kit, where the orange part appeared like the reflective vests you wear over your clothing if you're, I dunno, a guy on a bicycle on a road at night or a photographer on the sidelines working a game, the Catania players didn't really look like players.

"They look like a team of goalies." To me, they really did. If anything, the keeper should have worn that kit and the rest of the team should have worn the keeper's outfit, which was a much less obscene white shirt with blue shorts.

OK, enough on Catania's crappy kit.

Moment of silence. Frankly, I thought it was for Gabriele Sandri (yes, the Lazio fan killed...in case you forgot the name). For the first time in my life, I saw the two curve with identical banners: "giustizia per Gabriele." As it turns out, the moment of silence was for the Italian soldier killed in Afghanistan this week...

The Curva A banner (and as you can see, I finally learned how to zoom with my cell phone camera...)


So the apathy was growing everywhere, and even the teams on the field were affected by it as frankly, the opening, shoot...I dunno...20-30 minutes were pretty much the most pathetic - check that, apathetic - minutes of an attempt at soccer we had seen in a long time.

"This is like a Serie C game." Now I know what I missed out on in recent years.

At one point, a Catania player missed an easy pass. I had a thought and Annalisa blurted it out: "he missed the pass because he saw that photographer on the sidelines!"

"Oppressalo!" We all turn around to try and figure out where that is coming from...

Blasi was virtually our most dangerous player out there.

"Did you know that Blasi has never scored in Serie A?"

"Gatti has never scored in his entire career."

General laughter all around, until we realize that the guy was actually being serious...!

The game was in fact so boring that at one point, we all became hynotized by a paper airplane. Yes, a paper airplane. For some reason, the rows behind us threw these around throughout the first half. One missed my head by inches. But at one point, there was this one plane which slowly and meticulously glided towards the field, where the others burned out in a blaze of glory a few short rows from their launching point.

Not this one. This one flew as slowly as it physically could have without stalling, and slowly, slowly, slowly made its way to the field. It changed direction slightly and ended up hitting the ground by flying straight into this box-shaped, open-topped Oviesse advertisement somewhere on the athletic track behind the goal. "Basket!" A spontaneous round of applause broke out by more than a few people around us (including both Annalisa and I) who had spent the better part of the previous 30-60 seconds following the glidepath of this paper plane instead of seeing what was happening on the field.

Then, It happened. I gotta capitalize that cos It warrants it. Zalayeta, who I have been very critical of in recent weeks, scored a goal that stunned the entire stadium. As a matter of fact, the reaction was more subdued than you would expect. Except this time it wasn't apathy.

"I don't think anyone expected a goal like that out of him, that's why we were so mellow in our response. We were all sitting there incredulous that he had done that." Not sure who it was who said that. Annalisa? Anna? Donatella? Not sure. It was definintely a female. Don't ask me who...

Halftime, and more superstitious rituals go off to get blessed, as the saying goes around here. Instead of waiting for Attilio to bring the Caffe' Borghetti up to us, Annalisa and I go down to join the crew (in the process, I almost trip and fall thanks to a loose seat...almost happened again on the way back up with - yes! - the same seat). Touch the lucky horn. I touched Anna's lucky horn once, and it was during Napoli-Cagliari (...).

"As soon as we started touching the horn, we scored!" OK, I'm touching it. Screw it. There goes that apathy again. Too weak to resist fighting it. But not completely. We were offered a piece of casatiello, fresh from some place by Armando's house, and while everyone partook, I refrained. Can't throw all your superstitious rituals away...(remember, I don't like to eat during games).

"Hey guys, there are two empty seats down there, stay with us!" Armando seriously trying to break with tradition here. But are you sure there are empty seats? It looks pretty full around here...

"Right there, after my son" someone else chimed in. Annalisa and I actually sat there and pondered for a few seconds. The only time we had sat with the group was...against Cagliari.

"Let's do it." So off we go and take the seats. Right away, the guy next to me informed me that the seats were in fact taken.

"That's actually good. The only time we sat here was during the Cagliari game..."

"Well, we don't want to change formation now!"

No, we sure don't. The guy had a point and off we went back up to row 24.

Second half a little better. A lot better, actually, as the game at this point could even be described as spectacular. But it's gotta be said. With Blasi out there, it's a whole other team. Seriously. He was a gladiator. Not for nothing we only earned 1 point in 3 games without him while today, a win appeared to be implied.

Another pearl by Zalayeta. This time, the celebrations were a little louder. And the entire rest of the game, I kept waiting for the third goal.

"I predicted 3-0 (to myself) before the game, we're gonna score again!" Maybe I had Annalisa convinced of this, too. Hell, I had certainly convinced myself.

And of course, who came on to replace Zalayeta? Well it wasn't Calaio'. This time, he didn't even get his 10 minutes of fame. Nothing. And don't think that Reja didn't receive an onslought of insults from us for refusing to give this kid a real chance...

We walk out. No major fanfare. The usual couple of minutes of hanging out outside the stadium before we part ways. Off to Armando's, where we caught a few minutes of whatever post-game show. Enough to see some of the day's goals, the results of Italy's WC 2010 qualification draw ("a trip to Dublin for Ireland-Italy, that's a must-do!" I exclaim to Armando), and some comments from Zalayeta in an interview. Saw him being interviewed by Sky right after the game. Took a couple of shots with the cell phone but the zoom made the pics come out very blurry.

The Quote of the Week goes to my friend Criss the juventino. In a text message sent to me shortly before midnight (the deadline!): "Zalayeta runs fastest when he is celebrating a goal." Too true. If only he could run like that before he does the scoring, we would have ourselves a very complete little forward out there...